Keep Them Reading This Summer With Personalized Books

Summer is just around the corner, and with your kids off school, you’ll be wanting to keep them as entertained as possible until they head to the classroom again! As well as playing outside with their friends and watching their favorite shows, reading is a great activity for keeping children occupied, and even helps to keep their brains active and minds learning during their time off! 

Despite reading being a fantastic holiday activity, studies have shown that less and less children are reading in the summer break. According to Scholastic’s reading report The Summer Reading Imperative, the ‘summer slide’ is a major problem for children, in which the loss of summer reading creates big gaps in their reading levels. Researchers estimated that by the time a child who struggles to read reaches middle school, a lack of reading over the summer can lead to a huge two-year gap in reading achievement! As well as this, the number of children aged 9-11 who read zero books over the holidays has doubled from 7% to 14% since 2016 – a particularly worrying statistic.

In the Scholastic reading report, they found that 94% of parents are aware that reading over the summer can enhance their child’s learning and increase their reading level, but just under half of the parents surveyed were unaware of the ‘summer slide’ (47%)! When children stop reading during the summer time, they can lose many of their academic skills, which is largely due to a lack of reading. The best way to make sure your child is prepared for the new school year is to get them engaged in books over the holidays! 

In The Book have discovered some of the best benefits of reading for little ones, including the development of communication skills, higher academic performance and enhanced development of senses. They also discovered that the benefits of reading to your child from a young age have an incredible impact on their lifetime earnings. Reading to your child for just 20 minutes a day could increase their lifetime earnings by an incredible $320,000! Despite this remarkable increase, only 18% of new parents read to their children for 20 minutes a day. Making story time part of your daily routine is proven to have lifelong as well as immediate benefits! 

In this day and age, the world revolves around technology, with smartphones and social media everywhere you look. While these devices are fantastic in so many ways, too much screen time is particularly damaging for children, as it prevents the development of learning and social skills. When children spend too much time looking at a screen, they don’t achieve the same benefits they do when they read. Also, screen time is often an activity done independently, meaning parents and children miss out on an opportunity to bond and spend quality time together. 

This summer, make sure you’re keeping your children occupied with some books to read during their weeks off! With so many benefits to obtain before the start of their new school year, your little one can get a heads start on their reading level and enjoy some flexibility with books they can read outside of school! The best place to start is to find a book on a topic or character they love – do they love Marvel? Or Disney Princesses? Or, maybe even learning about space! 

In particular, personalized books are very effective in helping children enhance a variety of skills. Since they are put right in the story among other characters, children become engaged more thoroughly in their book and therefore get the most they possibly can out of their reading. When they see their name appear on the cover and throughout the pages, they really feel like they are part of the story and want to keep reading on! Many books from In The Book even let you add a photo to appear on the back page, making the book a lovely keepsake as well as an engaging book to help improve their reading. With a special message too, the book can double as a thoughtful gift as well as a reading skills aid. 

Personalized books leave children wanting to return to their specially made book time and time again, increasing their interest in reading to achieve these amazing benefits! Because of this, giving your child a personalized book for the summer is ideal for making sure they are still keeping at and improving their reading level when they’re at home.